I'm a Big Girl Now

I've been so busy trying to get caught up on our life posts that I can't even remember when I last did an Anna post. I desperately need to do one because my little baby is growing up too fast! She has officially decided that she wants to grow up and no longer wants to be a baby despite her promise to always be my baby. No more high chairs, no more strollers (this is not news), no more baby utensils (Mommy fights her on this one), no more mommy picking out her shoes, no more leaving the house without her purse, and to add to all that her favorite words lately are, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!


She is a strong willed, independent little thinker. Nothing gets past her and she is like sponge lately, just absorbing everything every day. And she's becoming my little shadow and wants to do all sorts of grown up stuff. Her doll babies are lucky because she is such a good mommy to them. She grabs her purse and pushes her babies all around the house in the stroller.


She also decided that her pants needed to go on a walk one day too. So she unloaded them from the drawer, piled them in the stroller, and pushed them around all night. This girl cracks me up.






Anna is also getting better at helping around the house.

vacuuming

and sweeping

Her vocabulary does go beyond her favorite word of NO and even though I never documented her first words (Mommy was first, thank you very much!) back in those crazy months, she now says all sorts of words. My favorites are (and I'll translate):

• peas (please)
• tank (thanks)
• hup (help)
• hawwg (hug)
• heeitis (here it is)
• hot (everything is hot, even if it's cold)
• gaba gaba gaba (granola bar)
• sunsign (sunshine)
• Annay (Anna)
• two (when she counts everything is two. It must be her favorite number. Or maybe just the only one she knows. I'm sure she can count to 100 by now, so it's probably just her favorite)
• uh-ohs!

These are just the ones that make me chuckle every time she says them. She also has started calling Dave Mommy instead of Daddy. She knows he's Daddy, but she just won't say it anymore for some reason. Dave would feel bad except for the fact that usually she's running up to him when she gets to see him with a big smile, saying "Mommy! Mommy!" I guess it's cause she so used to it only being Mommy? Who knows. I'm sure she'll figure it out soon.

This girl loves a good chair.Or even a bench. It doesn't even have to be a bench. If it's raised off the ground even a little, she'll try and sit on it. She loves sitting on the empty crates at Costco. She still does not however, like to sit in the nifty seat that as invented for shopping carts. One day she found this cute little rocking chair just her size at a store, and I couldn't get her away from it, so I picked up the chair, put it in the cart, and then put her in it. It was heaven! She loved it and she stayed in the cart! I considered buying it just for that reason, but it was a little too pricey for our budget. The good news is, the next day I found a camping chair on clearance at Target. Love Target clearance!

Anna also keeps busy by drawing for about half the day. We're trying to focus on keeping it on paper, but thanks to pencils, Aquadoodle, and Color Magic we haven't had any mishaps yet. I hope I didn't just jinx myself! Yesterday we went to story time at the library and she got to color at the end. I could tell she was particularly proud of this set of scribbles, so I put it on the fridge when we got home. That made her day! She kept going by the fridge and smiling at her picture. It made me excited to cover up the fridge one day with all of her masterpieces.

I know my previous post was about Barney, but that was so yesterday. Lately all she wants to do is watch or read Curious George. She just loves that funny troublemaking monkey. I have to laugh when I'm in the kitchen and I overhear her burst out a good chuckle at his antics. I guess she knows good comedy when she sees it.

And finally, her last latest obsession is shoes. She's a girl after her mom's heart. She loves putting on her shoes, my shoes, Dave's shoes, any shoes. So she was thrilled to try on her new pair of Anniversary Sale shoes.

The shoes go great with her saggy diaper

Anna brings so much fun into our home. It's hard to express how MUCH I love her! Some days she tests me, that's for sure, and I worry if I'm cut out to be a good mom for her. But there are good days, and even moments sprinkled throughout the bad ones and I look at her and can't believe she's ours. She amazes me. That cute little blonde head on that cute little body. When did she go from baby to this? Oh, sigh! I sound so cliche and old. It is true though, I can't help it. She'll always be my baby no matter what size of shoes she wears. Love you baby girl!